Apple makes some great Multimedia hardware, Let's use Free Software to get the most out of it! I want this thread to be a hub for Multimedia issues with PPC hardware.

The #1 reason I'm getting an iBook is so I can have a portable Sound Studio for live performances, etc. What I want from you, the community is to know how many sound programs you all have gotten working on the PPC platform either with Gentoo-PPC OR Gentoo-OSX. W. can make this Thread into a Troubleshooter for all these myriad APPS.

For me sound was always a headache topic on my G3 iBook. Running the newest kernel (2.6.10) most of the problems seem to have disappeared, but two still subsist:

I tried hydrogen on my iBook G3. Unfortunately, all of the sound output of hydrogen I get is noise. In xmms (with alsa output), all 44.1 kHz mp3 files run a bit too fast (probably at 48 kHz), and there are many pops in the music output. Using the aRTS output-plugin of xmms, the music plays at the correct speed and sounds clear. Trying the jack-output-plugin, jackd reports:
"sample rate in use (44100 Hz) does not match requested rate (48000 Hz)"
Why does xmms want 48 kHz?

I would be interested in hydrogen / xmms reports of other PPC users. Does it run ok somewhere, or is anyone getting the same problem as I?_________________"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
-Oskar Wilde

Try setting the buffer size (ms) to "1" in the konfiguration dialog for alsa in xmms. This solves the problem for me...
But alsa seems to consume a lot of cpu, definitively more than oss (which is confusing because it is just the oss-emu based on alsa)

I cannot set buffer size below 200 ms in xmms (the default value is 500). With 200, nothing changes, I still get too fast and choppy sound.

I solved my jack problem (see here).
Hydrogen + jack works now. But the jack output of xmms only produces white noise (the same holds for the ALSA output of hydrogen and the ALSA output of alsaplayer (jack output of alsaplayer works fine)). My suspicion is that this a typical PPC-endian problem). Could anyone check the behaviour of these three programs on his PPC machine?_________________"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
-Oskar Wilde

I cannot set buffer size below 200 ms in xmms (the default value is 500). With 200, nothing changes, I still get too fast and choppy sound.

Hmm, might be a Translation problem... there are two changeable values in the dialog. Both are named "Puffer-Größe" in german wihch means "Buffer Size". So I mean the second value, this can be set to 1.

I played a bit with the "Period time" setting. And found out:
For values 1-5 ms the sound seems to be clear
Beginning at 6 ms, the sound gets choppy
xmms gets stuck in an infinite loop for values between 62ms and 92 ms. On killing xmms I get the message

Code:

Message: alsa mixer timed out

Segmentation fault

You've probably found a bug in XMMS, please visit
http://bugs.xmms.org and fill out a bug report.

For values of 93ms or above, the sound is clear again.

For really bad sound (without infinite loop) set Period time to 61ms.

This is quite mysterious. Does anyone have a x86 machine to find out if this behaviour is PPC-specific?_________________"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
-Oskar Wilde

But ALSA is the much better driver architecture and ALSA (as well as ALSA-based sound servers like JACK) will be the future.
For this reason some newer programs do not deliver OSS output anymore. OSS will be deprecated soon.
So we really should get our PPC-programs ALSA-ready.

I played a bit with the "Period time" setting. And found out:
For values 1-5 ms the sound seems to be clear
Beginning at 6 ms, the sound gets choppy
xmms gets stuck in an infinite loop for values between 62ms and 92 ms. On killing xmms I get the message

Code:

Message: alsa mixer timed out

Segmentation fault

You've probably found a bug in XMMS, please visit
http://bugs.xmms.org and fill out a bug report.

For values of 93ms or above, the sound is clear again.

For really bad sound (without infinite loop) set Period time to 61ms.

This is quite mysterious. Does anyone have a x86 machine to find out if this behaviour is PPC-specific?

Ha, just what I was looking for to get smooth non-stuttering sound on my mac mini. Thank you very much for your testing!_________________Please add [solved] to the initial post's subject line if you feel your problem is resolved. Help answer the unanswered

FWIW, NetBSD's "snapper" driver worked for me on the Mini; I commented out the check for the text "snapper" in the compat string, because I was getting "AOAKeyLargo", and the Snapper driver worked... Although only with /dev/sound, not /dev/audio, suggesting a limited set of supported playback modes.

In xmms (with alsa output), all 44.1 kHz mp3 files run a bit too fast (probably at 48 kHz), and there are many pops in the music output.

I solved this problem by switching the MPEG Layer 1/2/3 input plugin to 22khz (which just produces noise), and back to 44khz.
Right now I have the settings: Audio device; hw:0,0 (instead of default), Buffer time 500ms, Perdiod time 5ms.
Compared to mplayer which plays fine, the output sounds the same speed and isn't choppy anymore.
Pao.